Ultra-fast fashion brand Shein is changing its use of “net zero” in its consumer communications in Germany after a watchdog accused it of deception.

NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) filed a complaint against Shein’s European operator Infinite Styles Services, based in Dublin. It claimed that “net zero” language in the company’s marketing materials failed to be backed up by realistic steps taken toward that goal, given that Shein’s emissions rose by 23 percent in 2024.

After receiving a court-backed warning letter, Shein signed a cease-and-desist document agreeing to change its language online.

A Shein spokeswoman told Trellis that after engaging with DUH in recent months, the company published additional context related to its net zero target, which already appeared in its 62-page sustainability and social impact report.

A fast-fashion flashpoint

The controversy is the latest in a string of reputational woes for the brand, run by the private Roadget Business of Singapore. Shein continues to epitomize, for environmental activists, the apparel industry’s conspicuous consumption and overproduction.

It’s also the most recent in a series of successes for the Berlin environmental watchdog. It successfully pressured Apple last fall to modify “carbon neutral” advertising for the Apple Watch. In April 2025, it won a greenwashing lawsuit without damages against Adidas, which then ceased using the term “climate neutrality” in Germany.

London-based activist group Stand.earth awarded Shein an “F” grade in June, charging that it would be the “100th biggest emitter in the world” if it were a nation. Parisians picketed last fall when Shein opened its first retail shop there. The company is also the target of ire by U.S. and French lawmakers over “childlike” sex dolls and weapons from third-party sellers in its catalog.

Shein’s rapid production and runway-copycatting have cranked up the volume on resource-intensive business practices introduced in the 1990s by retailers such as Inditex’s Zara, H&M and Forever 21.

Shein’s emissions ambitions

However, in May, Shein’s net zero ambitions received validation from the Science-Based Targets initiative. For 2050, the brand’s goal includes reducing absolute greenhouse gas emissions across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 by 90 percent.

By 2030, Shein seeks to cut emissions in Scopes 1 and 2 by 42 percent, and by 25 percent for Scope 3, compared with 2023 baseline levels.

The retailer has described potentially using carbon removal for residual emissions, if necessary, closer to its deadlines.

“To deliver meaningful emissions reductions in the fashion industry, brands and retailers must look beyond target‑setting and focus on where the real impact lies: Scope 3 and deep supplier engagement,” said Thibault Boiron, director of supply chain decarbonization at Reset Carbon, a carbon-strategy consultancy in San Francisco.

“With around 500 companies across the fashion value chain now holding validated science‑based targets, the risk of SBTi becoming a tick‑the-box exercise is real,” Boiron said. “Real progress only happens when supplier commitments are paired with clear, costed, mutually agreed decarbonization roadmaps and robust monitoring systems that blend accountability with practical technical support.”

It’s the business model

Shein’s Paris-aligned climate targets fail to mollify the brand’s many critics, who are also unimpressed with Shein’s circularity attempts, which include using deadstock and reaching for 31 percent recycled polyester by 2030.

DUH, also known as Environmental Action Germany, called Shein inherently harmful to the climate for releasing as many as 9,000 new designs every day, three quarters of which are virgin polyester.

DUH “fundamentally criticizes the practice of fast-fashion companies that gloss over the climate neutrality of their products with promises of long-term sustainability without explaining in detail how these improvements are actually to be achieved,” the organization stated on Jan. 30.

The group blamed Shein and Temu for driving over-the-top consumption in Germany, which it says receives 400,000 packages delivered by air every day. DUH also accused Shein’s Dublin operator of misleading people with the terms “local,” “eco-friendly” and “100 percent natural.”

Corporations are not DUH’s only target for criticism. It is also calling on the German government to follow the models set by France and the Netherlands in creating extended producer responsibility systems to repurpose or recycle textiles, as mandated by the EU.

Elsa Wenzel

Elsa Wenzel is a special projects editor and former managing editor at GreenBiz Group. She previously covered business, technology and sustainability for PCWorld, CNET, the Associated Press and MotherJones. Elsa holds an MS from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern and a BA from the University of Iowa.